Study on the evolutionary game of central government and local governments under central environmental supervision system

Abstract

The central environmental supervision system is an innovation to environmental governance in China, which has created a new form of the game between the central and local governments. In this paper, an evolutionary game model is built to analyze the interaction process and evolution direction of the central and local governments, which can find out the key factors that affect the strategic choice of both sides. The results demonstrate that: (1) The behavior choice of the central and local governments depends on the comparison of cost and benefit participating in governance. In the low-cost state, the local government chooses to rectify while the central government chooses to supervise. With the increase in cost, both sides tend to take less action. (2) Due to the low initiative of local government, the special funds can play an important part in encouraging local governments to carry out rectification, while its scope of changes is narrow and inflexible. (3) According to the data simulation results of MATLAB, the mechanism of reward and punishment can affect the decision-making speed of the central and the local governments. With the increase of rewards and punishments, it takes less time to reach the stabilization between the local and the central government. This study can provide constructive suggestions for optimizing the environmental supervision system and improving the performance of environmental governance.